3 Key Takeaways From Our Trust In Advertising Survey

At Unruly we wanted to understand what trust means for ad tech in 2018, and how advertisers are navigating these uncertain waters.

To find out, we conducted a global trust survey of 350 senior level media buyers looking at a) how perceptions of trust vary across markets, and b) what the key indicators of trust are when choosing an ad tech partner.

Here you’ll find three key takeaways from the survey, and a link to the research. So let’s take a look!

1. Premium environments are king in the UK, Germany and Singapore

For UK, German and Singaporean buyers the most important factor for trusting an ad tech vendor is assurance that their content is being seen in premium, brand safe environments.

This is most important to German media buyers, 72% of whom ranked this as the most important factor when making a decision around which provider to partner with – a 33% uplift on the worldwide average.

On the other end of the spectrum, US media buyers were the least concerned with brand-safe, premium media placements – with only 47% of buyers ranking it as their #1 priority.

2. Bots and viewability are key concerns

Key concerns about programmatic video varied across each market, but we saw a consistent worry around fraud committed by bots, and low levels of viewability – with the former being top for US buyers (34%), and viewability being the primary worry for UK buyers. These concerns highlight the importance and growing need for third-party certification and fraud prevention.

In contrast to the US and UK, bot fraud was only a top concern for 15% of German media buyers and planners – less than half of the number in these other markets.

3. GDPR is on everyone’s minds

With the GDPR fast approaching, it’s clear that data protection and privacy are front of mind for many marketers and media buyers. During our survey ‘violation of privacy laws’ was the number one worry around programmatic for more than 30% of respondents. With brand and client-side media buyers expressing the greatest concern around the topic.

Media buyers in Germany and Singapore were, surprisingly, the most concerned – with 37% and 33% of buyers naming it their top issue, respectively.